Carrie's Story: An Erotic S/M Novel (22 page)

But time inched on, a maid coming by in a while to clean
me up again and bring me my predicted tofu and vegetables
for dinner. Then some more waiting. Yoga breathing. I hated
the suspense. Finally, another security guard, not Karl, thank goodness, came in and attached some truly painful clips to my
nipples, with horrid little bells attached to them, and then
disappeared silently.

About fifteen minutes later, my bracelet prickled, and I followed its directions through the corridors, the little bells
jingling spitefully and painfully with every step I took.
I wound up at a small employee cafeteria, and a security
guard at the door led me in. It was a typical, brightly lit,
steam-table kind of eating place, with wood-grained Formicatopped tables and molded plastic chairs. The only thing out of
the ordinary was a platform about three feet high and maybe
twenty-five feet wide against one wall. Two or three slaves
were already kneeling here, on hands and knees, asses against
the wall, placards dangling from their collars, eyes cast down.
Some of the folks eating at the tables were looking them over,
pointing, joking and, I suppose, planning the good times to
come-the rest were just eating, drinking coffee, hanging out,
smoking, and chatting.

The guard led me to the platform, and I noticed for the
first time that there was another nasty wrinkle to the system.
They didn't chain you down or anything. What you did was
climb onto the platform and back up -until your asshole was
impaled on the dildo mounted on the wall. Thoughtfully, the
dildos were mounted at different heights; the guard seemed
to have a sense of which was my height-well, I guess they'd
get good pretty fast at figuring that one out. It was big-big,
cold, smooth, and hard-and, mercifully, well greased. I
winced as I backed onto it and was rewarded by a few hoots
and giggles, as well as one or two promises that I'd be accommodating a lot more than that before the evening was over. Somebody tossed a little wad of paper at me, which hit my
face, then, a banana peel, which kind of bounced off my
shoulder. I could feel myself blush, and I bowed my head, but
the guard raised my chin with the handle of his whip. The
little bells hanging from my aching breasts jingled as I arched
my back to help me assume the correct position. I looked at
the faces at the tables, banal, jocular, cheerful, and I really did
feel punished. Abased. This was different from anything I'd
experienced before. I remembered Jonathan's little speech
a million years ago, the one about my jagged little edge of
critical intelligence-oh please, gimme a break! These people
could care less about my critical edge, about the subtleties of
my consciousness, the fine balance between objectification
and narrative subjectivity. I felt bereft. I didn't like to look. I
had to keep my head up, but as much as I could, I lowered my
eyelids. I could see those damned little bells, shiny under the
fluorescent lights and slightly blurred, beneath my SLOW TO
OBEY/TALKED OUT OF TURN placard. I put everything I had
into trying not to cry.

A few more slaves were led in, I could see out of the
corner of my eye. But I didn't need to see it when Willfully
Disobedient made his entrance-I could tell he was here by
the excited murmur in the crowd, the jokes and catcalls, and
the little missiles that started flying at him even before he
got to the platform. He was the Main Event tonight, baked
Alaska or cherries jubilee for dessert, no doubt about that.
I forgot about my fears a little and raised my eyelids to
watch.

They got him backed up on the stage and impaled, the
security guard taking advantage of his own fifteen minutes
of fame by slapping him hard in the face a few times and pulling and twisting at the bells on his nipples (I noticed suddenly that there was also one hanging from his scrotum). The
crowd seemed to like the guard's little show just fine, except
that they would have liked to see the boy exhibit less selfcontrol. (Secretly, frighteningly, so would I have, I realized.)
Still, even I'd been able to control myself thus far, so I guess
they weren't surprised that he'd done so as well. The evening
was young yet.

But they were already starting to quarrel among themselves. I mean, it was obvious to me, as well as to them of
course, that not all fifty people in the room were going to get
a crack at the Main Event that evening. Some of them were
going to have to be satisfied with the rest of us. I didn't know
whether this was good or bad news for me.

In retrospect, I'm impressed at how well they worked
it out-how cheerfully, fairly, and quickly. Of course, this
was one of those countries where everybody gets more than a
month of paid vacation every year and cradle-to-grave medical care, and they can't change computer monitors without
the union's okay about the long-term health implications.
Add to it an employee benefit like the one I was participating
in-like the one I (w.#-and why shouldn't they be decent and
humane? To each other, that was.

So, as far as I could follow, the rules they improvised
were: Willfully Disobedient would be fucked by two teams
of ten (it would have to be men, obviously, and I could see
that the women were not pleased by this, but biology i' destiny sometimes, even under social democracy). They'd line up
on either end of him, and the idea was to compete for which
team took the longest to get finished coming in him. Bets were
taken, though I couldn't figure out what the prizes would be. They hustled us off the platform and dragged it to the center
of the room so that everybody could see. The asshole team
grabbed a big tin of some kind of EuroCrisco that somebody
had brought out from the kitchen.

The rest of us were really just bit players. They attached
leashes to the rings in our collars so that they could drag us
on hands and knees around the crowd (they positioned us at
different points). We were popcorn at the movies, mostly, for
those watching the entertainment. I was vastly relieved and,
somewhere deep inside, just a little insulted. Go figure.

Anyway, I was pushed down to the linoleum floor and
my leash given to a hefty woman sitting near the platform.
She raised her skirt and pushed my head into her crotch,
where I began to lick and suck, feeling the trembling of her
big belly and thighs, and hearing the shouts and laughs from
the crowd.

After a while, she jerked the leash and slapped my ass,
hard, and I crawled away from her, to the next hand, this one
a man, who turned me around and got down behind me to
fuck me up the ass. I was glad, at least, that this allowed me
to see what was happening up on the platform. About what
you'd expect, I guess. Willful was on his hands and knees
sucking some big guy's cock, while the guy, who was dressed
like a cook, grasped his pony tail to control the movement of
his head. It was hard for me to see, but I had the idea that
Willful wasn't just a passive mouth being manipulated, but
was actually putting some action behind it. Meanwhile, the
guy at his asshole side, maybe an electrician or something,
had j ust come, to cheers from the audience, and was staggering away, while his replacement began cheerily drilling away,
occasioning more cheers and calls of encouragement.

This seemed to encourage the guy drilling into me.
I heard myself calling out in pain and was rewarded by
some hard slaps against my breasts. Finally, though, he
was done, pulling himself back into his seat and handing
my leash to the next person, who hauled me over her knee
and started spanking me (the crowd had started up rhythmic clapping, to accompany the next mouth guy's orgasm).
And so it went, my simply following the jerks at the leash,
relaxing into it as hands pushed or lifted me where they
wanted me to go, breathing as well as I could, trying to stay
as open as I could wherever I could. My knees were aching
from crawling around the sticky floor, my face was sticky
with come and tears, and the rest of me was a sticky, sweaty
mess as well.

I was under another woman's skirts when the contest was finally over, and a huge cheer rose from the crowd,
accompanied by groans and boos, I guess from those who'd
bet on the losers. So I didn't get to see who won. Not that
I cared. The woman grasped my head firmly, signaling that
I was to finish what I was doing, and I did, until I heard her
moans, and she dropped her hands entirely. A security guard
picked up my leash and pulled me to my feet. I got to see
Willful being pulled to his feet as well; I guess he'd fallen flat
on the stage from exhaustion. The crowd shouted their disapproval at this, and then laughed as they saw how weak he
was in the knees. Two big men lifted him to his feet, and then
they hustled him around the cafeteria so everybody could at
least get a pinch or poke at him. But he wasn't crying. He
seemed, from what I could see, interested in what was happening, bleary-eyed and mostly exhausted, but still amazingly
alert.

At last, the party was breaking up. As a security guard
grabbed my shoulders and turned me toward the exit door,
I noticed the man in the dark glasses again, standing against
a wall with his arms folded, watching everything, it seemed
like. At least it seemed like he was watching me. Maybe he's
head of security or something, I thought idly, as I prepared
to make my way down the corridors and back to my room.
Leaving the cafeteria, I could hear a few shouts and guffaws
behind me -I guessed they were still tormenting that tall,
beautiful boy. And I never did find out what you had to do to
be counted as WILLFULLY DISOBEDIENT in that place.

The next few days were much calmer. I spent a lot of time
in the Garden-I was a lion in the zoo, a marvelously decorated peacock on the little carousel, a statue on the fountain,
and a cafe waitress a few times more-and I got very quick
at responding to the peremptory nod, the snap of the fingers,
the contemptuous "you, there." Drop everything, climb gracefully down, pay strict attention, and open and give yourself
totally to the probing fingers, the hard cocks, the slaps and
pinches, the appraising comments made to companions and
other buyers.

It was a bit easier in my room, waiting for whoever
turned up. Sometimes they'd be buyers, sometimes staff
members. The staff members just wanted to fuck me, of
course. And because they couldn't mark up my skin before
the auction (and my ass was healing, mercifully), there was
a limit to how much they could hurt me. There were lots of
slaps and spanks, lots of swipes with their whips, nothing that
hurt too terribly much-it was a whip more for effect than
for really doing much damage. And when the buyers came to my room, they didn't act that differently. Maybe, I thought,
it was because the little white room with its iron bed seemed
partly like a room in a brothel, partly like a room in a convent.
It was its own ironic little turn-on. People just wanted to get
fucked there.

Meanwhile, time passed in a comforting, monotonous
way, a continuous present. I never saw a clock, never knew
what time it was. All I knew was where I had to be and what
I had to do now. I had to work hard to keep track in my head
of the days to the auction; part of me felt as though I'd be here
forever. Still, I tried awfully hard to obey, to assume positions well, to relax into whatever I was pushed or dragged
to do. Margot's line, "the system is your master," had a resonance for me. I did think about her, though, and wonder if
I'd see her again.

Then, in late afternoon of the fifth day, the night before
the auction, they threw me a real curve. My bracelet led me
back from the gym to my room, and there, on the bed, was a
dress. It was mine, a gray-green wool, just a long, soft, sinuous button-down cardigan really, one of the pretty dresses
Jonathan had bought for me to wear to visit the board of
examiners-or, at least, to wear in between the hotel and
their apartment. My shoes were there too, at the side of the
bed. And there were stockings and a garter belt, and pretty,
Victoria's Secret underwear. Silk tap pants-sexy wonderful
little abbreviated boxer shorts -and little lace underwire bra
that hooked in the front. All in a deep, smoky gray. I'd never
worn anything like that in my life -my pre-Jonathan underwear had been standard cotton three-to-a-pack, with the
occasional splurge if Jockey for Women was on sale (and of
course with Jonathan I hadn't worn any at all). They'd even given me back my wristwatch. Were they throwing me out?
As far as I knew, I hadn't done anything wrong.

I was really panicky. I went to the bed, and there was an
unsigned note:

Take off your collar. Then shower, dress, and put
on makeup. The Argus will tell you where to go.

I'd never taken off a collar. My hands trembled as I did.
So easy, just buckles. They must be throwing me out. I went
to the little bathroom and took a long shower, doing all the
things for myself that normal people do. It felt as though I
was doing it through a haze of memory. I felt quite clumsy
with the makeup, but I looked good, I thought, when I'd
finally finished putting it on. I felt numb, confused, cheated.
I had tried so hard for so long. What had they wanted from
me that I hadn't given them? It must have been the little
exchange of glances with Willfully Disobedient, I was thinking, wandering around the room distractedly, waiting for the
bracelet to buzz me.

When it did, I hurried to the Argus, got my diagram, and
set off. This time I had to negotiate a fairly complicated set
of twists and turns down corridors. I even got lost once and
had to consult another Argus. But Margot had been rightyou couldn't get too lost in that place. The final lap of the
instructions took me up a stairway, cleverly represented on
the diagram. I was beginning to feel like I was playing one of
those early computer games like Adventure. I might have even
enjoyed it, if I hadn't been so panicky about being thrown out.